22. Vaulting Skies
22
Vaulting Skies
ISSA
T he celestial fleet hovered in the void, suspended on the edge of the impossible.
Their ships were sleek, liquid entities forged from the cores of dying stars, their hulls shifting amid molten silver and pure light.
Ethereal blue engravings spiraled across their surfaces, etched with runes older than time.
They pulsated with an energy that defied the laws of matter.
As if they did not fly so much as move with space itself, bending the fabric of the universe to their will.
The Saatifa were waiting.
A boarding ramp unfurled from the lead Sacran warship with a whisper, bridging the familiar and the unknowable.
It extended and touched the exterior hull of the airlock on the Perseus, where Issa and Ki’Remi waited for their ride, their hastily packed bags slung over their shoulders.
The airlock doors slid open, and with a deep breath, Issa stepped onto the secured bridge ramp, heading towards destiny.
She sensed the Sableman prowling behind her as she approached the undulating entryway to the Saatifa’s fleet crown jewel.
Issa perceived the sentinels of the Most High before she set eyes on them, sensing their souls shimmer in the immediate plane of existence.
Their presence was not oppressive or loud but undeniably vast, a quiet dominion over everything they touched.
A tall figure glimmered into view as if from thin air, draped in flowing armor glittered with light and shadow.
His features were too perfect and sculpted to belong to anything mortal. His eyes, twin orbs of liquid silver, seemed haunted by the vastness of eternity.
When he spoke, it was not mere speech but a poetic song in the harmony of an ancient hymnal.
‘The child of dusk returns to the wandering star and steps upon the path to the ethereal she once called home. Have you come to jettison away your burdens, Issandra Elaris Astraeus D’Leqan, daughter of the burning horizon?’
She stopped before the ethereal entryway and stared at him without a flinch, meeting his gaze with a steadiness carved from centuries of defiance.
‘I see you, Kastian Saqar Xenon D’Niryan, Warden of the Celestial Sanctum, Master of the Etherbound Legions, Sentinel of the High Gates, Keeper of the Throne’s Silence. The course is shadowed, yet my feet remember its encumbrance,’ she answered. ‘The onus I bear is not so easily cast aside, for it is mine to carry until the stars grow weary.’
A ripple of acknowledgment passed through more Saatifa warriors who also luminesced into view, their armor shifting like woven constellations.
‘Step forward, dusk-born. Your waiting is at its end.’
She inhaled once, sensing, fokk , needing Ki’Remi’s presence behind her, solid, grounding.
She drew her confidence from him and advanced into the vessel that thrummed with unparalleled life force.
The walls were not metal or stone but an arcane, sentient material that shifted from a dense to a fluid, more ephemeral form in milliseconds.
Light pulsed in delicate, swirling patterns, a cosmic heartbeat, tracing the intricate celestial etchings that adorned each surface.
The floor did not echo beneath their boots; instead, it radiated as they stepped upon woven threads of reality suspended between dimensions.
Arched passageways stretched before her, framed with towering pillars that palpitated with divine inscriptions, not written but sung into existence.
The aether, for it was not air, was laced with whispered hymns as if the vessel remembered every word spoken since the genesis of time.
As they passed through the corridors lined with more celestial Saatifa warriors, their leviathan bodies stiff, their gazes unreadable.
Ahead, the doors to the bridge dissipated and shimmered away.
Not with a sound but with a breath and a song.
Twas where Zavei waited for her.
His voice was the hush of an eclipsed sun, the whisper of ages.
‘The stars have sung of your return, Issandra Elaris Astraeus D’Leqan.’
She tilted her chin, steeling herself.
‘Let them sing the truth, Zavei Rhakiba Caleph D’Ketheron. I have not come to kneel.’
Zavei stood before her, his eyes stilling her.
Up close, the two golden abysses swirled like twin galaxies, endless and consuming.
‘The Sanopic vessel, child.’
She shook her head, the earrings on her lobe catching the light. ‘ Nada . Not now. Not until I face Sulfiqar and hand them to him myself.’
Zavei’s face darkened into a storm. He was not amused.
‘You overstep, Issandra,’ he intoned, his snarl an invocation, a hymn laced with warning. ‘You dictate terms where none are granted. You presume the right to decide who shall receive that which does not belong to you.’
Issa held his gaze, unflinching.
‘It is not your property, Zavei,’ she said, her voice measured, unwavering. ‘Nor does it belong to Sulfiqar. It is mine until an exchange is met.’
Zavei’s lips curved, not in a smile but a lethal twist.
‘You have walked among mortals too long,’ he rasped, the tonnage of eternity in his tone. ‘Their hubris is infecting you. You regard yourself untouchable, untethered from the divine laws that bind the universe and our realms beyond it.’
Issa tilted her head, her dark curls catching the ethereal glow of the ship’s interior.
‘I believe in debts paid,’ she murmured. ‘Also, the suffering inflicted upon my family deserves its retribution. Sulfiqar will look me in the eye when he takes back what he covets. He will answer for what was done.’
‘Blasphemy and quisling.’
‘He started this fight, not I.’
A bristling silence coiled and snapped between them.
Ki’Remi, beside her, exhaled just a fraction too hard.
Arms crossed over his chest, his stance deceptively at ease, but she knew him now as she imagined the storm beneath his expressionless face.
She perceived his frustration and rage and how he probably hated this dance of veiled threats and poetic posturing.
He was a warrior of logic, raw precision, and battles fought with blood and steel, not verses wrapped in prophecy.
This word parry most likely stretched his patience, and she hoped he wouldn’t snap. Not yet.
Zavei floated toward her. ‘Your father was a man of defiance, as are you,’ he clipped in a whisper that shook mountains somewhere on Pegasi. ‘You stand upon the edge of ruin, child of dusk, and you do not still see it. The stars have for a considerable time since written your fate. Your shadows cannot outrun the coming first light.’
Issa’s fingers twitched at her sides, but she did not break.
She met him in kind.
‘Even dawn must bow to the rising sun,’ she murmured with menace. ‘And shadows stretch long before the final light fades.’
Zavei stilled.
She observed a flicker beyond his ageless expression.
Twas the ghost of approval buried beneath the divine’s restless, roiling countenance that he was working hard to keep in check.
With slow deliberation, he lifted a hand and made a small, imperious motion.
Rearward, two colossal celestial warriors stepped forward, towering figures clad in obsidian-gold armor, their faces hidden behind masks of polished starlight.
‘You’ve petitioned well enough for yourself, so you will come to us under guard to meet Sulfiqar,’ Zavei uttered. ‘You and your mortal companion.’
Ki’Remi’s jaw tightened. His muscles flexed, but Issa placed a light touch against his forearm, a silent request for patience.
She turned back to Zavei, her spine straight, her voice steady and even.
‘Let it be so,’ she said. ‘However, as I said, I will not relinquish the jar until I stand before Sulfiqar himself.’
Zavei regarded her for a long, vital moment, then inclined his head just enough to acknowledge her demand, no more, no less.
‘As you wish,’ he murmured. ‘Let it not be said that the child of dusk does not walk her path to ruin with grace.’
‘One thing,’ Issa called out, raising her hand where the clutching device rested. ‘I need this infernal chrono taken off me. If it stays on me, you won’t like the implosion it’ll cause on your ship. That might upend all your plans.’
The Saatifa commander sucked his teeth, huffed, and snapped his fingers.
The chrono fell from her wrist with a crack, and she stared at it as it disintegrated into dust.
With that, Zavei soared off with the calculated finality of a deity who had already decided how the end of days would unfold.
The couple exchanged looks and followed as a phalanx of celestial warriors stepped to flank them.
As she walked along, Issa exhaled in relief.
Beside her, Ki’Remi did not speak, but she sensed his meta-energy crackling, the raw resistance in his stance, the refusal to be cowed by immortal bullies.
She cast him a glance, catching a gleam in his narrowed, assessing gaze, followed by a slight smirk.
Zavei paused mid-step, swiveling as his golden eyes flicked to the Rider with a sudden focus of curiosity.
‘You find amusement in this, mortal?’
Ki’Remi’s voice was smooth as polished obsidian, deep as a midnight storm.
‘I uncover merriment in many things,’ he rasped. ‘Most of all, I think it ludicrous that you believe I’m a mere human.’
Zavei’s expression shifted with disbelief before he whipped back his luminous head and took off.
Issa almost laughed, stifling a chuckle when Ki’Remi sliced his glowing meta eyes at her, his face altering to narrowed concern.
Taunting Zavei was easy, but the battle ahead would not be.
The chamber they entered deep inside the ship was a prison in name only.
It was vast, with ceilings so high they disappeared into a void speckled with shifting star patterns.
The walls, if they could even be called that, were not solid.
They were a mirage, a cosmic trick of perception that gave the illusion of glass susurrated with energy beyond mortal comprehension on the threshold of space.
Through the thin, transparent barriers, the cosmos stretched out before them.
A panoramic view of the celestial expanse, not as seen from a ship but as if they had been set adrift betwixt the stars themselves.
The Saatifa guards bowed and exited, taking their place outside the shimmering doorway.
Ki’Remi chose silence as the luxurious entryway slid shut, leaving the pair alone.
He slid off his duffel bag, placing it next to the equally compact carrier Issa had brought.
Her eyes tracked him as he stalked past her and stood by the edge of the impossible window, leaning against a barrier, eyes on the view as they awaited departure.
His arms were crossed over his broad chest, his muscles flexed, his eyes darted, and his intellect warred between logic and disbelief.
The subtle shifting of his metanoid tattoos, silver and gold pulsing over his dark skin, betrayed the calculations running through his neural node.
His mind was working hard, seeking to render a reality that existed without translation.
The man was on overload, Issa guessed.
She felt a stab of pity for him. Twas a hella lot to take in.
Just then, the Cosmic Gate activated.
A shuddering rippled through the air.
A deep bass vibration, not of sound but of existence itself, pulsed through the chamber, resonating in their bones, sinew, and breath.
Then, the skies warped, bent, and fractured.
The darkness beyond the barely-there windows tore open into a vast, roiling, energy-charged vortex.
A maelstrom emerged through the rift, a corridor of light and shadow, a spiraling current of galactic energy, shifting like a river of auroras coiling through the void.
Ki’Remi narrowed their eyes, for this was not hyperspace nor a structure generated by mortal hands and space-time continuum engines.
‘Tis the divine passage, the Celestial Pathway, an interstellar route carved between dimensions leading to the Seventh Heaven.’
The Rider arched a brow at Issa, now at his side, and exhaled.
‘ Fokk ,’ he muttered, raking a hand down his face, his rasp and scraped raw from the sheer impossibility of what he was witnessing.
He turned to his woman, his silver-threaded eyes burning into hers. ‘I thought I’d seen it all.’
She smirked, arms crossed. ‘Yet here you are, struggling to process it.’
He took a jagged breath and made a guttural sound halfway between a laugh and a growl.
‘I’m a man of science,’ he said gruffly, returning to the window. ‘Everything I’ve ever learned tells me this shouldn’t exist. Still, it does. So I need to accept what I’m seeing is real.’
His head tilted. ‘However, this isn’t about me,’ he muttered. Tis about you.’
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye; his gaze narrowed now as if trying to see something beneath her surface.
‘Are you eager to go home, kidaya ?’ he murmured after a beat.
Her lips pressed together.
She rotated back to the Celestial Pathway, watching its divine currents twist and churn, the cosmic tide pulling them forward, heading for the Seventh Heaven.
She swallowed. ‘It was home before it all fell apart. To me, belonging has never been about a location. It has always been about people. When those who ruled over us turned their backs on my family, we found a new, safe place. Sivania and the entire planet of Sacra are no longer my sanctuary. Home is where my father, mother, brother, and sister abound.’
She swiveled away from the Pathway, facing Ki’Remi again.
His eyes were on her, and his expression told her while his norm was to question everything about her, doubt, push, and challenge, he’d try to have faith in her.
Hell, he’d followed her into this madness, the unknown, and the gods’ jaws.
Wasn’t that the epitome of faith? The substance of hope, the evidence of the unseen?
‘Somehow, with you, I feel at home too,’ she whispered.
He made a guttural growl, stepped to her, and enfolded her in his arms.
Before she could process it, his hands were on her hips, his forehead on hers, his breath hot against her lips.
‘Issandra?’ His voice was gravel and thunder.
She gazed up at him. ‘Tis my Sacran birth name.’
‘I like it a freakin’ lot.’
She let out a slow exhale, allowing her head to fall into his chest, his presence wrapping around her, steadying her as they were pulled into a reality set in motion long before they met.
They stood together, entwined on the edge of the infinite, gazing at the impossible unfolding before them.
Well aware nothing might be the same after this journey, or even if they’d return.